BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 1 77 



on his way to a recitation, he was tantalized by the sight of great flocks of Pigeons 

 continually passing overhead towards the westward. The recitation finished, he 

 returned to his room for a gun and followed their line of flight which led to some 

 gravel banks at Simon's Hill, near where the Cambridge Hospital now stands. 

 Here he took a position on the crest of a knoll and in a short time killed eighteen 

 birds. Not far off some men were working a net. Ihey had captured a large 

 number of Pigeons, and Dr. Cabot saw them take several dozens at a single 

 ' strike.' 



Such experiences were numbered among those of the past in the Cambridge 

 Region when I began to take an active interest in its birds, but for ten or 

 fifteen years later it was by no means uncommon to meet with a few Pigeons 

 here, even within our city limits. I saw a flock of about fifty at Pout Pond on 

 the morning of September 2, 1868. They came from the northward, and I 

 still remember how distinctly the red breasts of the males showed in the level 

 beams of the rising sun as the birds circled once over the pond : they were 

 apparently looking for a place to alight, but finally kept on southward. 



Three years later a really heavy flight passed through eastern Massachusetts 

 between September 2 and 10. I was in the Maine woods at the time, but 

 on my return was assured by game dealers in the Boston markets and by 

 reliable sportsmen of my acquaintance that the birds had been verj' numerous 

 everywhere and that "thousands" had been killed. At Concord and Reading 

 old pigeon trappers had even used their long neglected nets with some success. 

 My notes state that at Cambridge large flocks were seen passing at frequent 

 intervals for three or four days, and that at night the birds "roosted in pine 

 woods." 



On July 6, 1870, I shot a female Passenger Pigeon which was eating red cur- 

 rants in our garden, and on June 20, 1874, I killed another in the same cluster 

 of bushes, the fruit of which, however, could scarcely have been ripe at so early 

 a date. Both these birds were young, — fully grown but still in first plumage. 

 Thev were exceedingly tame, as, was also a third young bird which, early in Sep- 

 tember, 1878, spent a week or ten days in or near our grounds, feeding, much 

 of the time, in Sparks Street, where I frequently saw it avoid passing carriages 

 by merely moving a Httle to one or the other side, just as a domestic pigeon 

 would have done under similar circumstances. 



Mr. \V. E. D. Scott has asserted that in " 1870, and before, .... close to 

 the town [Cambridge], in the vicinity of Mount Auburn, a few [Passenger Pig- 

 eons] bred every year." ^ In another and more recently published passage relat- 

 ing to the same period, he has reasserted that at '"The Farm ' . . . . just back of 



1 W. E. D. Scott, Bird Studies, 1898, 203. 



